“The process is as much about play as work.”

Nadia Hassan, 30, Pattern Designer

Our lives are full of patterns. They’re in our bedding, our clothing, the gift bags we use to package friend’s birthday presents.

Nadia Hassan, 30, creates these patterns – and it getting some national recognition for doing it.

“This is my way of connecting with people,” the freelance designer and illustrator says.

Just over a year ago, Nadia left her full-time job as a web designer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to pursue her passion for patterns, colors and textiles. Now she says she is “a cross-disciplinary designer, artist, illustrator, photographer, reluctant copywriter, occasional street-painter, de facto social media strategist and business owner.” 

Nadia designs bold and colorful surface patterns for products sold by companies like Target and Hobby Lobby. You can also purchase her sassy prints on fabric, gift wrap or wall paper at her Spoonflower shop, a print-to-order site used by artists, or on mobile phone cases at Casetify.

“My style is always evolving, but my love for bold graphics, clean lines, cheerful colors and a healthy dose of playfulness has remained consistent from the beginning. I enjoy experimenting with abstraction, and the delicate balance between positive and negative space,” Nadia says about her pattern-making process. “The process is as much about play as work; it’s an exciting investigation of ideas, colors, shapes, textures and scale. Each day I look forward to discovering where the limitless possibilities will lead.”

Her work has been featured in national magazines such as Cloth and UPPERCASE, and in the book “The UPPERCASE Compendium of Craft and Creativity.” One of her designs was Spoonflower’s number five most favorited fabric of 2014.

Next time you visit downtown Greensboro, you can see her work on February One Place. She designed the coral and aqua hexagons painted on the pavement as a place-making project for a pop-up block party several years ago. The pattern echo the colors of the Woolworth’s lunch counter stools used at the famous sit-ins.

Nadia says she has found where her passion and skills intersect.

“(Designing) is what makes me feel like I’m growing and learning,” she says. “It’s not something that happens overnight. It does involve a lot of sacrifice.”

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